Ghosts of the Jungle
by Koalagriton
Summary: Amazon Turtle AU (tmnt 2012) It's the late 1800′s and April O'Niel has travelled from London to the Amazon Rainforest searching for some creatures her father claims to have seen when he was investigating as a naturalist scientist. Even if the scientific community didn't believe him she did, and she is set on proving him right.


April trudged along the path as her guide lead the way, steadily falling behind. Her booted feet felt heavy and her clothing damp with the humidity of the air, pulling and weighing her limbs down. Looking up all she could see was the green canopy above and around them and even with the sun this filtered it was uncomfortably hot. She wiped her face with the back of a hand and felt like she'd only been able to smear the wetness around on her skin as she sighed and tried to pick up her pace.

"Rest here," Coa'see, her indigenous guide, called out to her from a little further ahead as he pointed off to the side.

"Finally," she muttered under her breath as she adjusted the straps of her pack digging into her her shoulders through the fabric of the sand-coloured shirt she was wearing.

April breathed a sigh of relief when she reached him and saw the bank of a river in the direction he'd been pointing. "Thank you, Casey." She replied with a smile as she headed over with renewed strength, putting her pack down near a fallen log and taking a step towards the water.

A thought crossed her mind and she stopped, turning back to her guide that walked almost silently to where she'd left her pack to put down the much larger one he was carrying beside it. "Are you certain it is safe?"

His dark eyes regarded her question with confusion before darting off to the water. "Safe." Coa'see replied pointing his spear. "I return," he announced next and then immediately walked off.

April didn't bother trying to ask him where he was going, he did that often, and instead walked over to the river and sat on a rock near the water. She emptied out the contents of her pockets on the smooth surface behind her out of the way to avoid accidentally dropping anything into the river while she dipped her hands in the cool stream.

At least it was getting easier for her to interact with the strange man who accompanied her. At first when she was introduced to the one who would be guiding her through the rainforest she had hardly been able to look at him. He was barely even dressed, most of his tan skin bare as he walked around most indecently showing off his tattooed body. He didn't even wear shoes!

She would have refused right away to have him as a travel companion until she was told that he'd learned English as a boy from her own father, Kirby O'Niel. It must have been years ago when her father stayed at Coa'see's village as a naturist scientist and anthropologist studying the wildlife, flora and the ways of these people. Mr. O'Niel had returned to London a shockingly different man and now she was following in his footsteps, searching for the same creatures he had seen that had changed everything for her small family.

April sighed deeply as she tried to relieve some of the pressure in her chest, the importance of her mission and the lack of results so far making it suddenly difficult to breathe. She pulled out some pins that kept her hat in place, being careful not to dishevel her hair underneath and took it off, fanning herself with it as she dipped a handkerchief in the cold water to press against the back of her bare neck.

Her short reprieve was cut short when a noise other than the chirping of birds and chatter of other animals drew her attention. "Casey?" She asked the dense jungle in the approximate direction she'd heard the snap of a twig.

There was no response and even though she felt a little unsettled she tried to ignore the feeling. The jungle was a terribly noisy place, full of life and even though it was frightfully beautiful it was also quite terrifying. At night she could barely get any good sleep with how loud the insects and other unrecognizable nocturnal animals were.

April decided she was being silly, there was nothing there or it was Coa'see scouting the area for possible dangers or whatever it was he always vanished off to do when they stopped. She shook off the water from her hands, tied the handkerchief around her neck and began undoing her boot laces. Making sure Coa'see was still nowhere in sight she rolled up her trousers and dipped her bare feet in the water, letting out a soft, hissed sigh as the cold soothed the aches in her sore soles.

Even though she was trying to relax and rest before they started moving again, she couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. When she turned back around to check again just in case, she gasped and scrambled to her feet. Beside her boots and socks she'd left behind her was a large green fruit that definitely wasn't there a moment ago.

Her heart pounded in her chest when she realised she wasn't alone, there was no other explanation. Even if there were trees with that kind of fruit around, it just wasn't possible that one would fall this close without her hearing it and then slicing itself open exactly down the middle.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" April called out timidly, looking around the clearing as she turned around and around again. She cleared her voice and tried again, "Casey, if this is your idea of a joke it isn't funny."

An idea popped into her head and stayed there, a possibility that she couldn't let go of now that it had occurred to her. _What if it's them?_

There had been other fruit appearing during her trek in the jungle but she hadn't given it a second thought. It was just tropical fruit in a forest full of fruit-bearing trees. She'd thought she'd been lucky enough to find them wherever they stopped or that some monkey had been frightened off by her presence and left them behind in her path and she just hadn't noticed it when she'd arrived.

"Hello?" She called out again. "You can come out, I'm not going to hurt you."

It dawned on her that there was little chance they could understand anything she said so she tried to soften her voice and make it as welcoming as she could. She picked up both halves of the large fruit and held them out with the white fleshy side up and bowed her head slightly. "Thank you."

April waited in silence for a few seconds, straining her ears to hear any other sound over the din of the rainforest. Her head darted to her right where she could have sworn she heard childlike laughter but it was gone as soon as she'd heard it and she couldn't be sure if it really was laughter or the call of one of the many species of monkey that inhabited this area.

"Why speak?" A deep voice asked her from the other side of the clearing and she nearly dropped the fruit she held in her hands.

"Casey!" April cried out as she tried to calm herself down as much from the fright as from her excitement. "I think…" she started to say, knowing how crazy it sounded to have come to the conclusion because of a single piece of fruit. "I think they were here!"

Instead of the disbelief she was expecting, Coa'see's eyes darted to the fruit in her hands and turned serious, his eyes hardening and frowning. April thought that maybe he hadn't understood her but then he crouched slightly and turned with careful movements towards the trees, spear held out in front of him.

"Ama wilancha!" He called out into the jungle with a firm voice.

April tried to hush him. Speaking like that he could be frightening them away. "What are you doing? What did you say?" She was going to say more but he raised a hand in her direction and she fell silent.

Coa'see ignored her for long minutes as he listened in complete stillness except for his head turning every once in a while. When it seemed like nothing was going to happen he straightened and regarded her before speaking, the harsh frown still on his face. "Not sacrifice."

A chill went down her spine at his explanation. In other words, he'd told whoever was out there not to kill them and devour them. With her excitement April had forgotten the circumstances in which her father had seen the creatures for the first time.

The village had been preparing a ritual to honour their spirits, to appease their gods after a series of incidents that had occurred in the weeks prior. Her father had described them lightly as "nocturnal acts of vandalism". These incidents included all kinds of destruction escalating to the slaughter of some the villager's animals, their blood painting the walls of the huts in angry strokes. No one had heard or seen anything during the night, not even the village elder, Coa'see's grandfather, who'd woken up to see dried blood painting the wall right around his head.

The villagers had scrambled to set up the ritual and by dusk they'd picked out their offering, had them painted, decorated and ready. Mr O'Niel had taken careful notes of the whole procedure not really understanding what was going on, fully expecting to see a gruesome execution of some sort, characteristic of many tribes in this area when they offered a human sacrifice. To his surprise, the village had waited in silence until some creatures had emerged from the green foliage and taken away their offering with them into the jungle, never to be seen again.

The rest of Mr. O'Niel's journal had been filled with the obsessive drawings of those creatures from that brief sighting. His earlier notes and studies completely set aside as he wrote pages and pages of theories about the creatures, the sketches overflowing onto the margins as he recalled more details or thought of possible explanations.

April and Coa'see stood for a while, waiting for something to happen and when it didn't Coa'see told her they were leaving to head back to their camp. It wasn't until she was picking up her things that she noticed something missing.

"Oh no!" April exclaimed, making Coa'see turn from where he stood, balanced on the log to get a better view of the clearing. "It's gone!"

When Coa'see made a gesture of confusion she elaborated. "My father's pocketwatch, I'm certain I left it right here where-" she stopped short of her explanation as she pointed to the place on the smooth rock where she had found the fruit. "They took it." She whispered as Coa'see began walking along the way they came and after a last glance at the trees she followed.

The way back to the camp seemed much easier and she wasn't sure if it was because they'd walked more slowly or she was still feeling the excitement that fuelled her along the way. The possibility of actually coming into contact with the creatures whose existence her father had worked so hard to convince the scientific community had her heart hammering in her chest. She would be able to do it where her father had failed. She would be able to clear his name.

April was slightly upset about the missing pocketwatch but she figured her father wouldn't mind her losing it if he knew in whose hands it was right now. She didn't know how she hadn't noticed it before. Other small items of hers had also gone missing in the last days since even before they had set foot in the Jungle Spirit territory but she'd crossed it off as being careless as she packed in the morning or they had slipped out while they walked and hadn't noticed but now she suspected it had been them all along.

How long have they been aware of us and following us around?

"Casey, how do you say "turtle" in Quechua?" April asked Coa'see after dinner at the camp as the sun was setting and she leafed through one of her father's journals. "I should have had this with me and shown it in the direction I heard the noise from." She continued talking absently as she looked at one of the double-paged sketches.

"No." Coa'see answered her.

She looked up from what she was doing in confusion, not certain what he was answering. "What do you mean?"

"We should not be here." He said with a grimace showing the wide gap of his missing front teeth.

"What on earth are you talking about? Of course we should be here! You were right, this must be the heart of turtle-man territory," April continued, closing the notebook and trying to fit it into a pocket on her clothing where it would be more handy for next time. When that failed she hesitated and made a face before ripping out one of the larger sketches, folding it and tucking it away.

"The spirits of the jungle will kill and eat you." Coa'see said as he chewed a bit of meat off a bird leg they'd roasted on the fire and pointed to her with the bone.

"I don't think they are or they would have done it already; we've been here for five days now. I think my father is right and we can communicate with them somehow, they seem intelligent. Imagine that! And the scientific community thought "On the Origin of Species" was big…"

Coa'see just shook his head as April continued to talk to herself and she did her best to ignore him. Even when it was time to turn in she couldn't calm down enough to sleep. She decided instead to pull on some clothes in the dark and tiptoe out of her tent to crouch among her belongings, hoping to catch sight of the nocturnal thieves, illuminated only by the dying fire.

April was nodding off an hour later, her chin digging into the palm of her hand as she tried to keep up when she was suddenly alert after hearing what she could have sworn was the beginning of a snorted laugh. She never expected to look up and find large, amused, blue eyes framed in a green inhuman face, attached to an even more inhuman body, crouching directly in front of her.

She froze where she sat cross-legged, frightened at first and then afraid that if she moved he would scare and leave. After a moment of only looking at each other she noticed he was smiling at her, _actually smiling_ in such an unguarded, boyish way that she couldn't help but return it. His eyes sparkled with curiosity and an intelligence which was confirmed when he held out his hand to her with a round, yellow fruit in it. Another offering.

 _Three fingers, not five_ , she thought to herself as she observed and made mental notes of all the things her father had gotten wrong and all that he'd gotten right with only a moment he'd had of seeing them at a distance.

The turtle creature must have interpreted her inaction with hesitation because he scooted closer carefully, his hand steady as you would do when you were trying to coax a shy animal into taking food from you.

April smiled wildly at the thought of her being something like an interesting squirrel you found in the park and she reached for it, but before her fingertips could touch it, the turtle turned his hand over, shielding the fruit from her. She looked back up at him questioningly, wishing she'd had the foresight of learning some Quechua words she could use with him. She'd relied too much on her guides translating on the entire expedition.

He held out his other hand and she understood. "Oh! You want to barter?" Was this what had been happening all these days while she wasn't aware of it? He'd taken things and left fruit in exchange for them?

The turtle boy looked alarmed at her words and immediately put his hand to his mouth, his head turning sharply to where Coa'see's hammock was. When he didn't stir he turned back to her and nodded when she lifted a finger to her own mouth, showing that she would be quiet.

April tried to think of something she could give the boy that she wouldn't miss and that he would find interesting, her mind immediately recalling the sketch as she patted her pockets trying to remember where she'd put it. She hadn't noticed how much her fingers were trembling until she tried to fish it out of her pocket. The turtle in front of her must have been nervous too because the moment she extended the folded piece of paper to him, he snatched it out of her hand, dropped the fruit and darted away into the trees.

"No! Wait!" She whisper-called out, but the turtle boy was gone. She stayed up most of the rest of the night but he didn't return.


End file.
